


A New Kind of Employment

by Beth Harker (chiana606)



Category: Newsies (1992)
Genre: Canon Era, M/M, Post canon, background ship: Blink/Mush, main ship: Swifty/Crutchy, tw for mentions of racism and ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-30 23:57:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10887606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiana606/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: After four years in prison, Swifty is trying to make sense of his life, without getting overwhelmed by his past.  How he's going to do this while surrounded by old friends from his days at the newsboys' lodging house, he's not sure, but there aren't a lot of things he's sure about anymore.As for Crutchy, he's got a stable job and a comfortable life, but something is still missing.Will they find each other?  (Hint:  Of course they will, that's the entire point, but we're going to play the "will they?/won't they?" game for all it's worth, so hold on to your seats.)





	A New Kind of Employment

Oranges were four cents, and lemons were five. The air smelled like citrus, bread, and the fresh, raw cuts of meat that hung from the rafters. The sign at the front counter promised, in Crutchy's blocky handwriting, eight good cigars for twenty-five cents.

Swifty had been there to watch Crutchy write out the words. 

"Why good?" he'd asked. "Why not stupendous? Spectacular? Life changing?" 

Crutchy had stopped then, grinning up at Swifty. "You ever had your life changed by a cigar?" 

It hadn't been time, not then, to talk to Crutchy about going without, which Swifty guessed was all he'd done for the last four years. Nobody offered you cigars when you were in jail. They barely offered you enough food and water to keep you alive, and kind words were as mythical as the God that the chaplain warned you to turn to, in sermons that circled and repeated again again until they lost all meaning. 

Swifty's mouth had gone dry, and Crutchy's smile had softened. "I know the kind of guys who come here to get cigars," he'd said. "Well, guys and ladies that is. They likes plain words. Plain words, and good deals. Heya Swifty, remember making signs for the strike, you and me, back when we was kids?" 

"I remember that most of everyone else left us to it, while they played marbles." 

Swifty didn't talk about how fun it had been, sitting there with jagged wood, and flimsy paper, and a sticky, stolen bucket full of paint, joking about all the rude words they could stick on their banners, if they weren't playing at being a respectable workers' union. He moved closer to Crutchy at the counter, cocking his head to get a better view of the border that Crutchy was casually scribbling around the sign's edge. Swifty stretched out his long arms, cracked his knuckles. "Want help?" 

Crutchy had opened a drawer then, and grabbed a marker, only to throw it right past Swifty's face. It had rolled on the floor, past Swifty's feet.

"What happened to your reflexes?" Crutchy had asked.

"What happened to your aim?" 

"Awww, come on, you never liked anyone who made things easy for you." 

Swifty had bent down to scoop up the marker, steadfastly ignoring the tiny, sharp pains this caused in his back. He'd tossed it up in the air and caught it again, once, twice, three times, before throwing it back at Crutchy, who got it on the first try, and then sent it back. 

"See?" Swifty had said, as he waved the marker at Crutchy, feeling something akin to relief. "My reflexes ain't as bad as all that. Now are we going to make those signs, or ain't we?" 

 

\--------

The grocery store had a splintery wooden floor, which Crutchy swept every day, with his broom in one arm, and his crutch under the other. That didn't keep the dust away. The building was old, older than the age that census reports said most people were supposed to live to. There were spiderwebs in the corners, and permanent smudges on the window panes. At least a dozen advertisements hung around the space, each one of them hand drawn. Crutchy didn't own the store, but Swifty still considered it his. Rumor had it he had a boss, but Swifty had never encountered the man. 

The grocery had baskets filled with greasy soaps, wrapped in brown paper, and tied shut with twine. It had a little shelf in the back, full of elixirs and tonics, promising wonders ranging from hair growth to inner peace. There were jars of boiled hard candies lining the front counter, which came in six different colors, and shined like jewels when the sun hit them just right. The candies were sold three for a penny, but how carefully Crutchy counted depended on who was purchasing them. There were some kids who could get as many as ten for a cent. 

"You used to steal handfuls of these," Crutchy said, one morning, when Swifty was sitting around the store again, since he had no where else to go. 

"Jarfuls," Swifty corrected, then wished he hadn't. It was like something had come upon him, a flash of his old self, there and then gone, leaving sweaty palms behind it. "I um... had honest work for a while," he started to say. He forced a smile, one that was so broad that it hurt; whether it was for Crutchy's benefit or his own, he couldn't say.

"Yeah? Doing what?" 

"The Fuller Building, down on Madison..."

"You...?" Crutchy cleared his throat. "Oh. Alrighty. How was that for ya?" 

Swifty could tell from the way that Crutchy's eyes widened, that he wasn't associating the building with its unprecedented triangle structure, or the way its twenty-one stories climbed up into the heavens. He was thinking about the men who worked the streets outside, and the services they offered. And Swifty couldn't blame him, since that was one of the city's juiciest open secrets. Most everyone knew what went on there, whether they wanted to talk about it in polite company or not. Swifty had to admit, that there was something to how quickly that Crutchy seemed to go from surprise and concern, to a hearty and utterly deliberate acceptance, even if Swifty didn't much need it for himself. 

"I built the place," Swifty clarified. "Well, me and about a hundred others. I was right there at the top, making the skeleton out of steal they sent in all the way from Pennsylvania. And every day it'd get higher and higher, till one day I was up there, perched on one of the rails and eating a sandwich, while all the people down below scurried around, no bigger than ants. It's the only time I ever loved this city. You never know what New York is, till you're up there on your own, with no one staring back at you or trying to shoo you away. I tell ya, Crutch, I could do that forever if anyone would give me a chance." 

"Imagine climbing something up high like that." Crutchy gestured to his crutch, giving it a solid tap on the ground. "Guess it'd be like watching the city through a kinescope. They sure make pretty pictures in those things, and they'll put you right in the center of a crowd, without anyone pushing you, and without you being able to smell who wipes their behind and and who doesn't. No one to talk to, though. That's a drawback. Maybe not for you." 

Crutchy raised his eyebrows, as if trying to get Swifty to say something. Swifty wasn't sure. Maybe he was meant to protest here that he liked talking to people, but that wasn't exactly true. He liked telling exciting stories to a good audience, and he liked shocking people. He liked being in a room with folks who he knew liked him, but who weren't expecting him to say anything unless he wanted to. Increasingly, he was starting to like being around Crutchy, and talking to him about anything and everything all day long. It was better than going back to Blink and Mush's tiny apartment every evening, and trying to be simultaneously amusing, useful, and unobtrusive. Not that Blink and Mush weren't great guys, and not that Swifty wasn't grateful to the two of them for giving him a place to stay, but Mush almost embarrassed Swifty in his eagerness to be helpful, and Blink was so different from Swifty that sometimes he felt like they weren't speaking the same language. 

_Tell him he's your favorite person to talk to,_ something within Swifty screamed. He bit his tongue. 

"I can usually find company when I want it," Swifty said. 

"You saying you want my company?" 

_Damnit, Crutchy._

"I'm here, ain't I?"

Crutchy decided to put Swifty to use after that, dusting all the high places in the store that he couldn't reach. It should have been boring, but it wasn't, because Crutchy followed him around while he did, talking all the while, mostly about canning and expired goods, but sometimes about things like Kloppman and the daily fight to get to the lodging house showers before the hot water gave out. Crutchy was a good story teller. He made real, mundane events sound like something you might see in a play, so much so that Swifty found himself casting vaudeville stars in the roles of "Jack", and "Dutchy", and "Dave", imaginary approximations of these characters, who weren't quite true to life, but were ten times more diverting than their real life counterparts had ever been. 

When it was all finished, Swifty climbed up the ladder he'd been using, and took a seat right on the top shelf, between sacks of flour that might well have been on reserve since the dawn of time, as new inventory came in on boxes and crates, more suitable to those who had to keep their feet on the ground. 

"You look like you're surveying your kingdom," Crutchy had joked. 

"Surveying yours, more like." 

Crutchy shrugged. "Can't say I've done have bad for myself here. It ain't much of a place, but it'll do for now. Sure is nice having you here with me."

\--------

April 19th. That'd been the day that Swifty got out of jail. He'd been given a two year sentence, and served four. He knew people who were in for twenty, fifty, a lifetime, but they weren't there for heists involving twelve cent costume jewelry, made of glass and tin. 

The truth was, Swifty had committed many crimes in his life, starting from the age of seven, when his adoptive "father" Sam, with his sharp blue eyes and Irish accent, had taught him how to pickpocket and play act for the tourists slumming it in Chinatown, who paid good money to have their coins pilfered by an adorable and deliciously immoral little scamp, and to have all of their biases confirmed. Everybody had had their role and their place on that stage, from the grey-haired men with their fake opium, to the meticulously choreographed gunfighters, to the Swedish girl who had pretended to be Swifty's wayward mother, though she'd been barely more than a child herself. 

Cutting free of all that and living on the streets had brought thievery to the forefront of Swifty's very survival, and he'd been a natural at it, snatching up food and money with an expertise borne of long practice and genuine passion. It had been his time with the newsies, however, that had truly bought Swifty to the pinnacle of his criminal achievements. With a group of thirty other boys to watch and revel at his every move, and a safe place to land in between bouts of wild stunts, Swifty had gotten his hands on treasures ranging from whole watermelons, to the keys to the cages at the Central Park Zoo, to the doorknobs off the World building (which he'd planted on Skittery). It hadn't been about the stuff by that point, so much as the excitement. As for consequences, Swifty had always been able to outrun them. 

If Swifty felt ashamed for how everything had turned out, it was not because of any wrongdoing he believed he'd committed. He felt shame because he'd been taken in for something petty. He felt shame because the punishment had been degrading, and because he couldn't sleep though the night, and most of all because he'd shown up after it at Mush and Blink's home dirty and thin, with a scraggly beard that had made him want to claw his own face off. 

He felt shame that the incident (if an entire four entire years could be rightly called an incident) still clung to him. Swifty believed, more strongly than he did anything else, that the past was the past. It happened, then it was gone. Blows banished into bruises and then into nothing, words flickered out as quickly as they were said, places and people existed only until they left you or you managed to break free from them. There were no more bars around Swifty now, and no enemy hands upon him. He looked like himself again. The desperate, haggard, hungry reflection he'd glimpsed in a shop window on his first day out no longer stared back at him when he looked in the mirror. 

The past was the past. It was a hapless sort of beast, without claws or teeth, but it was also vast and slimy and prone to suffocating its victims. There was a trick to protecting yourself from it, and the first part of that was not to bait the creature with memories and backward glances. The second was to know that, no matter what you did, that it couldn't consume you until you lay down and let it. 

\----------

"Remember how great the split pea soup at the lodging house was? Wish I could make it like that. Old Kloppman should've written a recipe book, huh Swifty?" 

Mush was in the process of making his own split pea concoction, which didn't look or smell that different than the gunk Kloppman had once served them, only Mush's peas had come out of a can, and there was no ham to be seen. Mush sighed and added a cup of water, then another, thinning out the soup. 

"Hey Swifty, remember the time you grabbed up all the spoons and forks from the kitchen, and we used 'em to make puppets?" He waved his spoon at Swifty to demonstrate, though this one was covered in green broth, and not improvised hair and eyes. 

"And remember how we used to always play together— you, me, and Crutchy?" 

"Yeah. I guess we did. And that reminds me..." Swifty patted his pockets, until he found the handful of turnips stuffed deep in his left one. "Crutchy sent me back with these. You want me to cut them up and toss them in?" 

Mush nodded, so Swifty got down from his seat on the counter, and started chopping. Standing next to Mush, he could smell the scents of wood, paint, and sweat, that clung to the other man after a day of factory work. Swifty had gone with him three times, because according to Mush, anybody could earn a wage where he was at. Swifty couldn't. Not because they were unwilling to hire him, but because the foreman locked the doors and windows once you were inside, to keep people from sneaking out once they'd signed the log book and clocked in. 

"Do you remember how the three of us liked to sit on the ground and play marbles? And, hey Swifty, what about stickball, with Crutchy as the referee?" 

"He sent me home with an orange too. We can split it up and eat it after supper. Or you and Blink can split it. I ain't that hungry." 

"That was before Blink came, when it was just the three of us." Mush swept the bits of radish up into his hands, and dropped them into the soup, stirring it once more for good measure. 

Swifty estimated that Mush had been around nine when he'd first met him, and sort of innocent as far as street kids went. He'd known his way around as good as anyone, but there hadn't been any wariness about him. He'd had big kind brown eyes, and the friendliest smile of anyone Swifty had ever met. 

Swifty pushed himself back from the edge of the counter, hard, then let his arms swing at his side, restless energy and restless frustration. It made Mush stare at him. 

Mush's eyes were the same, unless you looked at them in just the right light, and then you could see the first hints of the wrinkles that the skin around them would be sure to develop in the coming years. His smile wasn't any less friendly either, though it had a note of apology behind it from time to time, as if Mush was admitting to himself that others around him had problems that he couldn't quite fix. He'd waited until Swifty had made it very clear that he couldn't _breathe_ within the walls of the factory he worked at before telling him, in a rushed whisper, that he wished he was the kind of person who could get others to band together and change their circumstances, but it was too dangerous. The only way to put an end to what was wrong with American industry was to organize and resist every moment of every day, and Mush didn't think he'd read enough books in his life to know how to make a dent, or to know much of anything else for that matter.

 _"So that's why I does what I does,"_ Mush had said. _"It's because I don't know nothin'."_

"Did you hang around with Crutchy again all day today?" Mush asked, his voice suddenly very gentle. Swifty let out a breath, then flashed Mush his brightest smile.

"As a matter of fact, I did." 

"You gonna do the same tomorrow?" 

"Probably." 

Swifty let his muscles loosen. He grabbed three bowls from the cupboard, and started spooning the soup into them. They'd have to carry the bowls up six flights of rickety stairs, to get from the tenement's small kitchen, to the even smaller apartment, which Blink and Mush shared. 

"Crutchy always looks real happy when you go over," Mush said. 

"Nah, that's only when you come with. I'll tell you what Mush, the guy's positively sour whenever you ain't around. All he does is ask where you is."

"That doesn't sound true," Mush said. 

"It is, and you don't know because you ain't there. You know what Crutchy always says?" 

"What?" 

"Woe is me! What's my life without Mush Meyers to remind that time old man Klipclop sneezed real hard in the year 1897?"

"You mean Kloppman?" Mush didn't seem to be buying it, but he was smiling. 

"Maybe so. Some old guy."

"Do you remember when..."

"I remember the last time our dinner got cold because we was standing around jabbering for hours on end instead of eating it. You wanna know why I remember it so well?" 

"Cause it was yesterday?" 

"Smart." 

\-------- 

The next day, Swifty stuck with Crutchy until it was time to close up shop. As casually as if he did it every night, Crutchy handed Swifty the keys to the store. There were five of them on the brass ring, one for the front door, one for the back, one to the stock closet, one to the back room where Crutchy lived, and and a tiny silver one for the drawer where the money got stashed. Swifty locked up the front, and returned the keys.

"Feel like going for a walk?" Crutchy asked. "Nice night for it." 

"Sure." 

Crutchy disappeared into his room, and came back with a second crutch, which he waved at Swifty before tucking it under his arm. 

"Since when do you have two?" Swifty asked.

"Since I came into my fortune." 

Swifty snorted. "You sound like an heiress. Or someone who married one." 

They walked to the back door. Crutchy unlocked it, held it open for Swifty, and then locked it again. 

"Here's the thing about Children's Aide," Crutchy said. "They're stingy bastards. Not that I didn't need what they gave me when they gave it to me. Just that I could've used more. We all could've. And hey, now I got it!" 

Swifty didn't answer. He was looking at the crutches. They were a lot longer than the one Crutchy had had as a kid, not that Swifty had paid it much mind then. It made a difference, was all, seeing Crutchy standing at almost his full height, instead of slouching over a stick that had never been big enough to match his lanky frame. Crutchy's old crutch hadn't had a rubber tip like the ones Crutchy was using now. It had been decrepit, held together by bandages and determination as much as anything else.

"Most of the time I just use the one of these," Crutchy said, as he propelled himself forward. "Easier to carry things when you got a hand free. But when I want to walk around at night without a care in the world? Two's the perfect number." 

"Sounds right to me." 

Unlike the tools that he used to get around, Crutchy really hadn't changed much at all from his lodging house days. He still had his thick brown curls, big ears, and hazel eyes. His hands were a little bigger, maybe, and peach fuzz had been replaced with just a hint of stubble. He was cleaner and more neatly dressed than his boyhood self, and for all that he'd stayed the same, there wasn't a hint of child left in Crutchy's demeanor. He seemed steadier to Swifty, like somebody who had found his place in the world. 

It was only belatedly that Swifty realized he was staring. He raked his hand through his hair, and turned his face towards the sky, to look at the moon and the stars. Manhattan was maturing right along with her people. It was transforming too, something that Swifty could see very clearly, coming back into it after his years locked away. The city lights were so bright and numerous now that it was easy to forget that electricity had ever been something to marvel at. Maybe someday there would be enough of them to block out the heavens in their entirety, and maybe it wouldn't matter, because illumination was illumination, no matter where it came from. 

"I've... uh... been meaning to tell you something," Crutchy said. He coughed, like he was trying to clear his throat. There were other people on the street — a couple of gossiping laundry ladies with kerchiefs and heavy sacks, a horse and cart rumbling past, a little chimney sweep sleeping underneath a store awning. 

"That sounds like a confession, Crutchy." 

If Swifty had been unsure whether or not he was right, Crutchy's short laugh solidified the idea in his head. 

"You always smile when you're nervous," Swifty pointed out, with a nonchalant smirk of his own. 

"So do you," Crutchy shot back. "And you smile all the time."

"Do not!" 

"Sure you do." 

"Nuh-uh...". 

"You're smiling now." 

"That's 'cause I'm teasing you, Crutchy. Jesus."

"Could be that I give you butterflies."

Swifty blinked. He put his hand over his mouth, and pulled down, like that would erase the grin from his face.

"Forget I said that," Crutchy said quickly. "I'm teasing too."

"Are you gonna fess up, or ain't you?" Swifty asked.

"Just so happens I did something nice for you. No confessions needed." 

"Then why don't you just spit it out and tell me, 'stead of warning me that you're gonna tell me?" 

"When'd I warn you?" 

" _I've... uh... been meaning to tell you something,_ " Swifty repeated, in a simpering and tremulous approximation of Crutchy's voice. He licked his lips, tried to ignore the urge that said _run_ , and only half succeeded. 

"We having a race or what?" Crutchy asked peevishly.

"Sorry." Swifty forced himself to fall into step with Crutchy. He didn't know what was wrong with him.

"Anyhoo." There was an exasperated hint of you- _will_ -listen-to-what-I'm-trying-to-say sternness in Crutchy's voice, but it didn't last long at all as he continued talking. "I've been meaning to tell you that I got you a job. Only took a telegram to my boss! You can work at the grocery with me. That's all your problems solved. No need to thank me." 

Swifty didn't. He was concentrating on the cracks in the sidewalk, and keeping his feet from touching them, as a way of slowing himself down. Kindness had always weighed heavily on him when it came his way, and so he avoided it, unless it was willing to hunt him down. Usually it wasn't, but it didn't seem right to go racing off into the night, when Crutchy was just trying to be nice, and had no hope of catching him. 

"You alright?" Crutchy asked. "Looks like you're trying to read the meaning of life down there on the ground." 

"Boss man know who he's hiring? I—"

"Boss man barely knows he's got a store, till _I_ put his money in the bank," Crutchy interrupted, speaking rapidly. "Not that he's a bad guy, but I could set off Fourth of July fireworks in the middle of June, or dig out the floors and turn the place into a public bathhouse, and he'd be none the wiser, long as it kept bringing in cash. Heck, I could bring in some girls from the Bowery, and have 'em put on a show, or start getting all my revenue from poker games out back, or..." 

"Murder people and set 'em dangling up above the butcher's counter?"

"Hey! No need to be disgusting." 

"You was listing things of ill-repute, like bath houses and hiring some guy off the street, who just happen to be an ex-con. Just helping out." 

"Point is, I wouldn't never do the thing you just said, the one with the meat I mean, but I _could_ , and nothing would come of it." 

"Got it. Nobody suspects sweet, innocent Crutchy." 

"They don't!" Crutchy said, with more heat than Swifty had been expecting. "And you know, sometimes I wish that for just once somebody would, but since they ain't gonna, I might as well take advantage of it." 

"Opposite problem here. Every one suspects me of everything, right off the bat." 

"So we balance each other out." 

"It's not good for business." 

Crutchy didn't say anything to that, so Swifty counted the sidewalk cracks, which he still wasn't stepping on. _One, two, three..._ the fourth one had kind of a squiggly shape to it, and the fifth was more of a scratch than a crack, but Swifty was willing to take distraction where he could get it. Somewhere in the distance, a woman was calling something through her window, in a language that Swifty didn't understand. When they'd started their walk, most of the buildings around them had been shops and restaurants. Most of the buildings around them still _were_ shops and restaurants, but as they turned a corner, Swifty could make out the higher outlines of factories and tenement houses. 

"I brought up the job 'cause I like having you around," Crutchy said. "... you'se gonna hate me for what I tell you next, but I guess I better say it anyways, just to be sure. Can't be sure of things unless you try 'em, and you were supposed to be happy about it besides. And who's to say you won't be? I ain't a mind reader. Sure would be nice if I was!"

"Tell me more about mind reading." 

Crutchy stopped walking, to lean on his left crutch and wave a finger at Swifty, "I see what you're trying to do." 

"And I guess you're trying to tell me about my new job, huh?" 

Crutchy smiled. Nervously. Swifty smiled back. 

"You've been doing it for three days already!" Crutchy said, in the tone of somebody who had been hiding in the shadows to ambush some poor fool with a surprise birthday party. "All those things you've been doing around the shop, to help me out? They're a job. There's money already waiting for you! You're employed. That is, if you wanna be." 

The very last sentence was spoken softly, in a small voice. If it hadn't been, Swifty might have said _no_ on he spot. 

"What do you get out of it?" Swifty asked. 

"Company, for one thing. Camaraderie. Companionship. Whatever you wanna call it." 

"Specifically mine?" 

"Yes, as a matter of fact." 

Swifty let out a breath. He laughed, without knowing why. "I'll have to think about it."

**Author's Note:**

> Historical Notes: the Fuller Building is currently known as the Flat Iron Building. Research happened for this fic. Most of it was on Wikipedia. 
> 
>  
> 
> More Notes:  
> As you may have noticed, if you are far enough into the story to be reading this note, this is an extremely long first part of what will be an extremely extremely long fic for an extremely extremely extremely rare pairing. If you, dear reader, feel up to living a review to tell me what you thought, it would do a lot to assure me that I'm not writing into a void.


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